Most of the 5,000 prisoners incarcerated at Louisiana State Penitentiary, also known as Angola, will die there. Angola is the largest maximum security prison in the United States. Prisoners there have long sentences, virtually life sentences. West Philly-based photographer Lori Waselchuk released a book this summer documenting the prison’s inmate-run hospice program, which provides dying prisoners some comfort and dignity in their last days. You can talk to her about it this Sunday.

Waselchuk will sign her book, Grace Before Dying, and talk about the project as part of an event hosted by the West Philly-based non-profit Books Through Bars on Sunday, Oct. 16. Running from 2:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. at the A-Space (4722 Baltimore Ave.), the event will also feature quilts made by Angola inmates that are part of a traveling exhibit (now at Saint Joseph’s University) accompanying the Grace Before Dying project. Local quilters and textile artists will also be on hand to discuss their work.

The event ends with a screening of the documentary In the Land of the Free, which tells the story of Angola inmates Herman Wallace, Albert Woodfox and Robert King, also known as the Angola 3, who between them spent almost a century in solitary confinement. Wallace and Woodfox are still in solitary after more than 37 years.

Here is a schedule for the event:

3:30 p.m. – Quilter’s Roundtable. Local quilters and textile artists will present their work.

5 p.m. – Reception

6 p.m. – Lori Waselchuk talk and book signing

7 p.m. – Screening of the In the Land of the Free

Don’t miss this pretty amazing exhibit at Green Line Cafe on Locust (4426 Locust Street). The cafe has launched the Screens ‘N’ Spokes art show that benefits multiple sclerosis research and the cycling team that promotes the cause.

The exhibition features a very cool selection of screen prints by a variety of North American artists who created their work especially for this cause. The prints can also be viewed and purchased on Etsy. All of the proceeds from the sales will go to the National MS Society.

Here is some more information on the Screens ‘N’ Spokes project and the people behind it.

On May 13, 1985, a Philadelphia Police Department helicopter dropped a bomb onto a row home at 6221 Osage Avenue, the headquarters of the group MOVE. Eleven people lost their lives, five of them children, and inexplicably, despite heavy fire department presence, 61 houses on the block burned to the ground.

Writer Andrea Walls grew up just blocks away from the bombing and witnessed its aftermath, and now, a quarter century later, she’s telling the story of that night into morning through her poetry. Walls’ chapbook, “Ultraviolet Catastrophe” examines the events from all sides, even at times transporting the reader into the mind of the helicopter pilot that dropped the bomb. With empathy, bravery and electric twists of phrase that speak to her project as both poet and witness, Walls brings light to this crucial moment in West Philadelphia history.

“Ultraviolet Catastrophe” was the first publication of Thread Makes Blanket press, a local small press operating out of the Cedar Park area, headed up by West Philly resident, writer, and creative writing professor Marissa Johnson-Valenzuela.  Most recently, the press also released “Letter from Tombs Prison, 1917,” a collection of writings surrounding correspondence between Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman that includes writing by Julie Herrada, Marissa Johnson-Valenzuela, Emily Abendroth, Anna Martine Whitehead, Shaun Slifer and Megan Gibes, as well as a reproduction of an original letter.

Now a Camden resident, Andrea Walls remains active in the Philadelphia literary arts scene and with the Leeway Foundation.  For more information about Andrea’s work, or Thread Makes Blanket Press or to buy “Ultraviolet Catastrophe,” click here or pick one up at the Queer Literary Festival on October 14-16.

– Emma

Curio Theatre Company opens its 7th season this week with Sarah Ruhl’s Eurydice, which will run from October 12 to November 12. The preview shows are on Wednesday, Oct. 12 and Thursday, Oct. 13 at 8 p.m.

Eurydice by Sarah Ruhl, an American playwright and recipient of a MacArthur fellowship, retells the myth of Orpheus from the perspective of his wife Eurydice. Ruhl created some new characters, such as Eurydice’s father, and made several changes to the original myth’s storyline. The play premiered at Madison Repertory Theatre in 2003 and off-Broadway in New York in 2007.

It’s interesting that Curio’s artistic director Paul Kuhn will be playing Eurydice’s father, and Eurydice’s role will be played by his real life daughter, Tessa Kuhn. All in all, it promises to be a delightful show from start to finish.

For more information on the show schedule and to purchase tickets ($15-$20) go to this page.

The Penn Bookstore (3601 Walnut St.) has a bunch of interesting authors coming in over the next couple of weeks, including Nicholas Sparks and Philadelphia Inquirer mob correspondent George Anastasia.

Here is a rundown:

• October 13 – Julie Hersh, author of Struck by Living: From Depression to Hope, 6 p.m.

• October 15 – Nicholas Sparks signing his newest book The Best of Me, 2 – 4 p.m.

• October 17 – Poetry Readings by the 34th Street Poets.

• October 20 – Former Penn faculty member Elijah Anderson will discuss his book The Cosmopolitan Canopy: Race and Civility in Everyday Life.

• October 25 – Stephen Tow will discuss The Strangest Tribe: How a Group of Seattle Rock Bands Invented Grunge.

• October 27 – The Inquirer’s George Anastasia and sports radio talk show host Glen Macnow will discuss The Ultimate Book of Gangster Movies.

“Have you seen my burlesque dancers?” ChrisK asked me as he handed out a flier for an exhibition of Neo-burlesque fashion design at the Intersections Gallery on 3933 Lancaster Avenue. Dressed in full burlesque regalia as part of a “roving exhibition,” three performers made their way up and down Lancaster Avenue like many of the other attendees of this weekend’s LOOK! festival, a two-month celebration of the arts that opened Friday on Lancaster Avenue. Spanning 36^th to 40^th streets, LOOK! is an extensive and diverse showcase of local work put on by the University City District.

A good few of the event’s 13 venues are reclaimed windows, storefronts, and in some cases whole buildings newly renovated for the event. At least one gallery built new stairs just for the occasion.

Much of the work on display was the recent output of local artists such as Randy Dalton, also a member of Dumpster Divers of Philadelphia. In the basement of the Community Education Center on 3500 Lancaster Avenue. Dalton’s Blue Grotto collected and arranged over 100 blue lights, curios, and ephemera to give this neighborhood’s art scene the “blue ribbon” it richly deserves, says the artist.

This street is lined with lots of different memories. At 3854 Lancaster, Melissa J. Frost installed an image from a punk show at Killtime, a venue located at this address from the early 1980s until 2003. Adding an interactive, technological flair to the event, a Drexel communications class presented “Augmented Avenue: Memories of Lancaster Avenue”, at the Projects I Gallery on 3820 Lancaster Ave. Using smartphone technology, students created phone-readable codes that correspond to certain locations in the neighborhood accompanied by short personal narratives of community members.

Other highlights included live funk and jazz, paste-up art works adorning telephone poles, and the debut of a guerrilla art installation on the roof of Dr. Kermit Gosnell’s now-infamous clinic where an incalculable number of people died under the doctor’s care. Like many of the pieces in LOOK! the installation called special attention to the building itself; a banner hung on the corner of the building with a collection of definitions of the verb, “regard”.

These exhibitions continue until Nov. 30. More information here.

– Jane